Kuvan houkutus

The exhibition explores the digital states of contemporary photography and their allure: How do images attract or seduce as they spread on the internet? How do they invite, capture or control attention? The fourteen artistic perspectives in the exhibition address visual phenomena through which communication, critique and humour travel in internet culture. They show how essential a role images play in shaping social, cultural and political climates. The exhibition explores the visual world of the internet through social media image streams, dating app profiles, face filters, memes, ASMR videos, "cute" profile picture imagery, Google Street View images, emojis, AI-generated images, and low-resolution screenshots used for conspiracy and protest purposes. These artistic perspectives map the complex mechanisms of temptation and reveal how images, or the structures behind them such as algorithms and datasets, direct attention, fish for emotions and influence opinions. The works show the active role of images as part of an attention economy that feeds desires, and how people themselves, as consumers of images, nourish it through their emotional reactions.